


Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's: Chicken Game

by Mathemagician93



Series: Yu-Gi-Oh: Card of Sanctity [6]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Hinted Minor Fudou Yuusei/Izayoi Aki, Projecting work related stress onto fictional characters, Shadow Games without the Magic, Teaching life lessons through over the top games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26462920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mathemagician93/pseuds/Mathemagician93
Summary: It’s been two years since the Ark Cradle was stopped, and Tetsu Ushio feels he’s wasting away after getting transferred to a desk job on his way to retirement. Then a trespassing case involving a famous criminal comes in, and the officer decides it’s time to play one last game…
Relationships: Fudou Yuusei & Ushio Tetsu
Series: Yu-Gi-Oh: Card of Sanctity [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1203583
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's: Chicken Game

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the final work of my Card of Sanctity series! If you are just jumping in at this point (which would be understandable, considering this is the only work that takes place in the 5D's timeline), you don't need to worry about reading everything else before jumping in. There are a couple of minor references, but this works well enough as a standalone after the events of canon 5D's.

Ushio found himself feeling alive for the first time in a year as he rode his old Duel Runner down the road to Neo Domino University. He was always in his element when he was out working on the streets—but unfortunately, age stopped for nobody. As the oldest member of Security, he had been forced to step aside for younger officers to handle the demands of patrol. He could see the reasoning behind it, but the so-called promotion was really just a way to get him behind a desk for the next eight years until he qualified for retirement.

Still, the higher position did have some perks, like being able to assign himself this particular case. On the surface, it was a routine trespassing issue—and the evidence was clear. Security cameras clearly identified the face of the man who had broken in to the Rebecca Kaiba Memorial Library. Even if they hadn’t, the signal given off by the trespasser’s criminal marker was easy to read within the building well after closing hours. Of course, because of that criminal marker, this was actually a much bigger case than it appeared—which was why he had made the decision to handle this case himself.

He pulled up to the front doors of the library, which normally should have been locked at this hour. However, a simple tug opened them, which wasn’t surprising considering the perpetrator was a master hacker who was able to get through the best security the Public Maintenance Department had to offer. He checked his pockets to make sure he had the extra tools he would need for this—corning this person usually resulted in a challenge to a game, and Ushio had the perfect game to teach the criminal a lesson.

Sneaking up on the convict was almost laughably easy. He had multiple textbooks open and sprawled across the table he was sitting at, and he was currently hunched over his laptop looking over something too complex for Ushio to understand. Internally sighing in disappointment, Ushio cleared his throat.

“So, Satellite Scum, did you not notice the library closes at midnight?”

Ushio wished he had brought along a camera to catch the look on Yusei Fudo’s face. The unflappable hero who had saved the city twice quickly spun around to face him with his eyes comically wide. However, the look was gone from his face in a second, only for the usual stoic expression to return.

“That depends, Ushio. Did you notice that the district of town you were born in became Satellite?”

Ushio just rolled his eyes. “Well, that might be true for my first birth, but if you look at the person who I was before age 18 and the person I was after 18, you could say I was reborn within an area that would become Neo Domino City. You might just get more of that story later tonight if you don’t agree to stop breaking in to the library.”

Yusei snorted as he returned to his work. “I just had some things I needed to look into. Besides, I haven’t caused any damage, I’ve got a more than full ride scholarship to this place, and I saved this city twice. Do you really think anybody is going to press charges against me for disagreeing with the closing hours of a public library?”

Ushio sighed. “Well, no, but do you really think you should force people into making that decision? We’ve managed to keep it under wraps from the general public, but your friends are all getting worried about you. You’re working yourself way too hard.”

“Everyone else is following their path, and I’m following mine. I have to stop Momentum from going out of control to make sure Bruno’s future never comes to pass. I owe him that much.”

Ushio fixed Yusei with a glare. “ _You_ don’t have to do anything. _We_ are the people who have to prevent that bad future—I would have thought your battle with Z-ONE would have proven you need to rely on your bonds with others to succeed. We’ve made sure to cut the speed of Momentum by 20 percent, and we’ll cut it further once we can safely integrate other clean energy sources. If nothing else, that should buy us a few years longer, and from the looks of the Ark Cradle the Meklord Invasion was quite a ways off anyway.”

Yusei didn’t even bother lifting his head from his work to meet Ushio’s eyes. “Do you really think that matters? The whole point of what Z-ONE was doing was to change the future. There’s no guarantee we won’t run into any problems sooner than he did. I need to keep working to get this resolved as soon as possible.”

Ushio sighed. Looks like he would need the extra tools after all. “Well, you certainly aren’t going to get anything done with me here bothering you. Let’s make this like old times. I challenge you to a game. If you win, I walk out of here and leave you alone. If I win, you take the rest of this night off and actually get more than two hours of sleep.”

Yusei shoved his laptop away. “Fine, if it will get you to shut up, I accept.” The champion duelist reached into his deck holster and pulled out his cards, but Ushio merely smirked at him.

“I said a game, not a duel. We’ll be playing something different.” He pulled out the wad of money he had brought over and set it on the table, smiling as Yusei stared at him without understanding. That confusion turned to shock when Ushio then pulled out his knife and set it on the table as well.

“This is a game that changed my life back in high school. It’s rather aptly named Money and Knife. There’s 400,000 yen in that pile, and whichever player ends up with the most money wins.”

Ushio could see the gears whirring in Yusei’s mind as he tried to puzzle out how this game could go. Wanting to savor the experience, Ushio then picked up the knife. “The rules are simple. On each of your turns, you place your non-dominant hand on the table, with the pile of money on top of it. Then…”

_THUNK_

Yusei flinched back as Ushio stabbed the pile of money over his hand. Ushio let one of his old sadistic grins cross his face as he pulled the knife up, revealing five bills stuck on it. “As you can see, you need to stab the pile of money. You collect any of the bills stuck to the knife and get to keep those. If you stab your hand, you lose. If you attempt to stab your opponent, you lose. If you refuse to take your turn, you surrender all the remaining money to your opponent—which in this case, means you lose.”

“You can’t be serious. Why the hell did anybody ever agree to play this game?”

“Let’s just say the stereotypes of Satellite are well-founded based on the general lawlessness found in Old Domino City. If you want more information than that, you’ll have to wait until after your turn. So, will you take your turn, or are you going to surrender?”

Ushio had hoped Yusei would back down, but as someone who grew up in Satellite he wasn’t going to flinch away from violence. He also seemed to be unable to back down from a challenge, as he grabbed the knife and stabbed it into the pile, taking away three bills before offering the knife to Ushio.

The officer smiled as he took the weapon. “That’s the spirit. Now, the story of this goes back to high school. Back then, I was far from the law-abiding citizen you see now. None of the authority figures in town gave two shits about anything, so gang violence was the law of the land. I was one of the biggest and strongest kids in my school, and I was all too happy to abuse that power.”

He thrust the knife back into the pile of bills and pulled away another four bills before handing it back to Yusei. This time, though, he didn’t stop telling the story while Yusei took his turn. “I quickly learned that I could use my strength to get all the money I wanted. Originally it started off as theft, but then it turned into embezzlement. I would charge people a protection fee and become a self-appointed bodyguard.” Yusei had managed to take away five bills on his latest turn, and Ushio took the knife again.

“Then, I found the perfect mark. There was this one kid who was an absolute bottom feeder on the social hierarchy. This kid had all of one friend in his life, refused to stick up for himself, and just let the whole school walk all over him like it was some kind of national sport. With how many people picked on this kid, I knew I could hike up my fees as much as I wanted, and he was the kind of kid who would just take it without fighting back.”

His latest stab only grabbed three bills when he passed the knife back to Yusei. “Of course, it didn’t go quite like I expected. I beat up two bullies and then brought him around to demand my fee, and this little dweeb goes ‘I won’t let you hurt my friends’ and begs me to beat him up instead of them. So I roughed him up a bit and doubled my fee before demanding he meet me that night to pay up.” Yusei got five bills again this time around before passing the knife back.

Ushio grabbed the knife but didn’t make any moves with it. “So, the kid shows up alone that night, but there was something different. Instead of meekly paying me, he tells me that he accidentally brought twice as much money as he needed and he would challenge me to a game for it. I just see the stack of bills and suddenly I absolutely had to have them. We end up going for a few rounds and going through three quarters of the stack when I notice something.”

He picked up the knife and squeezed the handle tighter and tighter. “Suddenly, I notice that I can’t relax my grip on the knife. I obviously have no desire to stab myself in the hand, but I want that last yen so badly that I know I won’t be able to stop myself from going for everything.” He reared his hand back. “With no other option, I realize the only way I can get all the money without stabbing myself is to turn the knife on the other kid.”

Ushio brought his hand forward to Yusei’s face, though he jerked it back before it got halfway there. Yusei maintained his composure, though he had brought his arm up as if to knock away Ushio’s stab. “Okay, would you mind explaining how someone who killed a kid ended up qualified to work for Security?”

Ushio just laughed. “Did I ever say I killed the kid? I never even got to touch him. After I tried stabbing him, the next thing I remember is it’s three years later, I’m in an asylum, and that little punk kid has grown up to become the King of Games.”

That got more of a reaction out of Yusei. “Wait, that kid was Yugi Muto? You tried to kill Yugi Muto?”

Ushio sighed and put the knife down. “Yes. I was just lucky enough that he solved the Millennium Puzzle that night, and so he got whatever magic that gave. It was like he could read my soul, and gave me the perfect game to set me on a better path. I had been so driven by money, and I used violence as a tool to get it. So I get placed in a game where I keep re-enacting that life until it gets to the point where my greed forces me to seriously injure myself.”

Ushio stabbed into two more bills, but he set the knife down away from Yusei. “It’s similar to this situation now. These bills—” he took the bills and set them on top of Yusei’s hand. “--symbolize the lives of people in the future. Unlike me who was only motivated by greed, you are motivated by a drive to help others, and you won’t rest until you’ve saved every last one.”

He offered the knife handle first to Yusei. “This knife symbolizes your studies. It’s the tool that will allow to meet your goal. But if you hold it too tightly, you’ll only end up hurting yourself or turning it against others. Don’t let your obsession with winning the game make you try to hurt someone you care about. Sometimes to win, you have to know when to let go.”

Understanding finally crossed Yusei’s eyes as he waved the knife away. “Thanks, Ushio. I get it. I’m fine ending this game. It’s just…every time I try to take a break, I see Bruno falling into an exploding star. I had to kill one of my friends to save the city, just because we were trying different ways to save the world. How can I step away in light of that?”

Ushio sighed. “I’m not asking you to give up. Keep working on this. Just take some time to take care of yourself too, you know? It won’t be the end of the world if you take a couple of days off to go watch one of Jack or Crow’s duels.” Suddenly, the smirk came back to his face as he remembered a conversation from a few weeks ago. He closed his eyes as he delivered his next words.

“If you’re worried about money, I know someone who could help. Senator Izayoi keeps complaining that you haven’t so much as called his daughter. I’m sure he’d be happy to buy you a week-long trip to Berlin to talk with Aki again.”

The slamming of the library door caused Ushio to open his eyes with a laugh. Yusei had run out without bothering to grab any of his all-important work. This was one thing the younger officers would never be able to replicate—nobody else knew how to so quickly subdue the city’s most famous criminal.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed the thought of making the Yu-Gi-Oh story (at least, the parts that all fit together in the same timeline) go full circle. The very first game we see is Yami Yugi challenging Ushio to a game of Money and Knife, and here we see Ushio using the same game to pass on an important lesson to Yusei. I will admit to projecting a lot of my own feelings of needing to work myself ragged onto Yusei when writing this-my last job wasn't the greatest for my mental health. I'm in a much better place now, but teaching Yusei this lesson was my way of coping with the stress at the time.


End file.
